Airman Missing in Action from Vietnam War is Identified

[locksly]

NEWS RELEASES from the United States Department of Defense

No. 1087-06 IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 26, 2006
Media Contact: (703) 697-5131/697-5132
Public/Industry(703) 428-0711

Airman Missing in Action from Vietnam War is Identified

The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that the remains of a U.S. serviceman, missing in action from the Vietnam War, have been identified and returned to his family for burial with full military honors.

He is Maj. Charles L. Bifolchi, U.S. Air Force, of Quincy, Mass. He will be buried on Oct. 27 at Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C.

On Jan. 8, 1968, Bifolchi and a fellow crewmember were flying an armed reconnaissance mission against enemy targets in Kon Tum Province, South Vietnam, when their RF-4C aircraft disappeared. A U.S. Army helicopter crew found their aircraft wreckage soon after first light the next day. Search efforts continued for four days; however, enemy activity in the area, combined with the steep terrain and high winds at the crash site, precluded the recovery of the crewmen.

Between 1993 and 2000, U.S. and Socialist Republic of Vietnam (S.R.V.) teams, led by the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC), conducted two surveys of an area that was believed to be Bifolchi's crash site. One team interviewed two Vietnamese citizens who turned over human remains they claimed to have recovered at the site. Another team found wreckage consistent with Bifolchi's aircraft.

Among other forensic identification tools and circumstantial evidence, scientists from JPAC and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory also used mitochondrial DNA from a known maternal relative in the identification of the remains.

For additional information on the Defense Department's mission to account for missing Americans, visit the DPMO web site at http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo or call (703) 699-1169.


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[Jerry D]

welcome home Maj. Charles L. Bifolchi, U.S. Air Force R.I.P.